The National Training Institutes

Find resources from the 2006 National Training Institutes!

• What are the Training Institutes?
• Who should attend?
• Who are the faculty?
• What happens at the Institutes?

What are the Training Insitutes?

The National Training Institutes is the premier training event on building local systems of care for children and adolescents with or at risk for emotional disturbances and their families. The Institutes bring together over 2000 individuals from across the country to learn and share about effective strategies and practices in building comprehensive service delivery systems. The atmosphere is energetic and exciting and the Institutes feature a variety of learning and fun experiences.

The Institutes provide in-depth, practical information on how to develop, organize, operate, finance, and sustain systems of care and how to provide high quality, effective, evidence-based clinical interventions within them. Such systems of care emphasize community-based care, comprehensive and individualized services and supports, services provided within the least restrictive environment, full participation of families, coordination among child-serving agencies and programs, and cultural competence. The focus areas of the Institutes provide practical approaches to implementing many recommendations of the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health Report.

Who should attend?

The Institutes are designed for a wide variety of participants including state and local policy makers, administrators, planners, providers, clinicians, case managers, families, youth, advocates, managed care organizations, educators, researchers, evaluators, students, and others concerned with improving services for children and families. Individuals representing mental health as well as other child-serving agencies, such as child welfare, education, health, juvenile justice, and substance abuse are encouraged to attend.

Who are the faculty?

The faculty for the Training Institutes is comprised of representatives of communities that have made substantial progress toward developing systems of care and state-of-the-art clinical interventions, as well as national experts. Participants select four separate half-day Institutes and two additional workshops on a wide range of topics critical for developing, operating, and sustaining systems of care and for providing services. Institutes and workshops address both public policy and clinical practice, reflecting the interdependence of both. Many Institutes will address recommendations from the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health.

What happens at the Institutes?

To ensure relevance and usefulness to all participants, the Institute and workshop sessions provide hands-on training in many aspects of systems of care, including serving young children and their families; early identification and intervention; developing, operating, and sustaining systems of care; systems of care in rural and urban communities; financing a broad array of services and supports; system policy and leadership; implementing evidence-based and promising clinical practices and supports; individualized care and the "wraparound" process; family partnerships at the system and service delivery levels; youth involvement and partnerships in systems of care; achieving cultural competence at the system and service delivery levels; meeting mental health needs in schools; serving children and adolescents in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems; serving children and adolescents with co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders; meeting the needs of youth in transition to adulthood and other special populations in systems of care; blending managed care approaches and systems of care; evaluation, accountability, and quality improvement in systems of care; workforce development and training; and more.

Each Institutes features a Youth Leadership Development Program designed for youth with mental health needs who want to learn leadership skills.

Special activities and support services are provided for families and limited scholarships are available to offset families' costs in attending the Institutes.